Repeat of a question I asked in a discussion on the Feature Requests, moved here at the suggestion of plugger2:

What I'd like to know, if anyone has the time and patience to explain it, is what might be a typical usage scenario for a Voice Gateway as it currently exists in the OBi devices — just something to help me understand why you might want to use one.

If this is something that's only useful if you are running OBiAPP then for the moment it probably wouldn't be useful to me personally, but I'd still like to be able to keep up with these discussions and understand all the capabilities of these devices.

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This is very easy. For example, I have 1 SP for incoming through voice mail. SP2 GV for outgoing US and Canada. Than I have few Betamax accounts for different international destinations, outgoing only.The reason to have few Betamax accounts is because each Betamax company has different rates to different countries. Because I will never receive any calls through Betamax, I can setup each Betamax account as voice gateway.Then I will create a rule, if destination for example Russia use VG1(Betamax1), if Germany Vg2 (betamax2), etc. Also I can use voice gateway to call Inum providers or Voxalot for peering with other sip networks.Also with gateway you can call another sip device directly.

murzik, thank you for the explanation. I think it's finally beginning to make sense now!

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I have an account with Voip.ms where I have three DIDs. One is my home number for family & friends; one is my wife’s pseudo business. She’s a home health nurse, and one I use for business. Voip.ms allows you to create sub-accounts with their own long on credentials and also allow you to set the outgoing Caller-ID on each account. When we call family and friends our home CID is presented. When my wife calls her patients from our home phone the call goes out her CID. This is important because when patients get her number they call her for every little thing. So instead of they getting our home number (which they have in the past) they get her CID which can be presented with a distinctive ring and /or redirected to voice mail giving instructions to call the home office or 911 if emergency. Similar situation on mine. So being able to select the outgoing gateway allows us to use the home phone for business, but not having to react to incoming business calls.

On Voip.ms sub-accounts you can also track calls & expenses of which we write-0ff every year on our income taxes.

I found it easier to explain in terms of AA. Suppose you would like to call a number of different OBi units (owned by yourself or your friends in other locations) in order to call further to take advantage of their SP/LINE trunks. Normally you let your OBi be a member of their circle-of-trust, ring-up their AA, then dial the target number, etc. This should be well understood by now. We refer to this way as 2-stage dialing.

With the gateway concept, we eliminate the AA step so that you can dial the target number directly. We refer to this way as 1-stage or direct dialing. The other OBi units whose SP/LINE trunks that you are allowed to use this way is called a gateway, and their OBi numbers are called access numbers. You can configure up to 8 Gateways in your own OBi, and refer to them as VG1, VG2, ..., VG8. Then by properly designing your digit map or ** code, you can select a gateway to make your call based on the number you dialed, and will not need to go through their AA first.

When you use AA, the AA may be set up to prompt you for a PIN for authentication. For a gateway, however, entering a PIN is not possible. A userid/password can be set up on each gateway OBi to serve the same purpose. You must then configure the same user/password on your own OBi's gateway configuration (AuthUserID and AuthPassword parameters for VG1 - VG8). Then the authentication can be automatically performed by the OBi's on your behalf.

On the gateway OBi side (the other OBi that offers you the service), it must have the InboundcCallRoute under OBiTALK service configured to allow incoming 1-stage call and which local trunk to use for those calls. For example, suppose you already have a circle-of-trust with 2 users, say 200111222 and 200333444, your current OBiTALK Service InboundCallRoute would be: {(200111222|200333444):aa}. To accept 1-stage inbound calls, you can augment this to:{(200111222|200333444):aa},{(200111222|200333444)>(Msp1):sp1}This tells the OBi if someone makes a normal OBiTALK call (by dialing the 9-digit OBi number), ring the AA.But if some makes a 1-stage call by dialing a number that matches (Msp1), bridge the call by dialing that number on SP1.

obi-support2, thank you for that clarification. Now I understand both the original intended use of these gateways, and also how others are using them (or want to use them).

I'm assuming that when you say that "A userid/password can be set up on each gateway OBi to serve the same purpose" (as entering a PIN when going through the AA), that userid/password would be placed under Voice Services, OBiTALK Service, in the Inbound Direct Dialing Authentication (where it appears there is space to enter up to four different userid/password pairs). And then on the other end, you could enter one of those same userid/password credentials under Voice Services, Gateways and Trunk Groups, in one of the Voice Gateways.

So originally, this was only designed to allow one OBi device to create a "trunk" or "gateway" to another OBi device. I understand that. According to the documentation, the AccessNumber field is where you place "The gateway’s OBiTALK number, includeing[sic] trunk information, such as: PP(ob200112334) or PP(ob300331456)." But in the beta firmware, you can also use something such as sp1(mysp.com:5062) or sp2(192.168.1.100) to send calls to a SIP service provider that doesn't require authentication. But that doesn't make sense to me still - what's the point of the sp1()? For example, lets say I wanted to send toll-free calls to tf.callwithus.com (which will accept them if this thread is correct). The whole point, I thought, is that you'd use this when you don't want to send those calls via sp1 or sp2. So why would you put sp1 or sp2 there? Or am I still not completely understanding this?

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Well, I was trying to keep the discussion simpler without mentioning the SIP URL case.

Yes, in 1.2 release, in addition to calling OBi number over OBiTALK Service to access an OBi gateway device, you can also use the same concept to access a SIP gateway over one of the SP trunks.The SP trunk must use SIP protocol (not GV) for this to work.So theoretically you can just put down sp1(myasteriskbox.com:5061) or sp2(192.168.15.115) as theaccess numbers for VG1-8. We do not have the same userid/password settings under theSP1/SP2 Service like those under OBiTALK service at the time. For OBi gateway device, we recommend using OBiTALK Service to access.For legacy SIP gateway device, you can use SIP as the access method.

Note that this SIP gateway support is very minimal, and borrows the SP1/2 SIP interface.It does not have good support for NAT traversal for example.

So apparently that does work with the beta firmware. Of course it's not sending a valid Caller ID as far as I can tell, but then some of these types of toll-free termination services don't pass Caller ID through anyway. EDIT: For the benefit of anyone else reading this, I later found that if you put a valid 10 digit number in the AuthUserID field of the Voice Gateway settings, it will sometimes use that as the outgoing Caller ID number. This may not work with all services, but it's at least worth a try if you want to send a Caller ID number. Of course, if you are actually registering with a SIP provider then they will likely determine the Caller ID that is sent.

Thanks for helping me understand this! Think it might be a good idea to make this thread sticky?

« Last Edit: April 17, 2011, 09:05:11 am by MichiganTelephone »

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I need to place the OBI where it can access the internet via WIFI.What device can be used that will allow the OBI to obtain access to the internet, is easy to set up and use and be able to make reliable phone calls.

I use an older router loaded with Tomato firmware configured as a Wireless Ethernet Bridge to link a couple of DirecTV DVR's wirelessly to the Internet though my main router in the computer room. It's been very reliable and should work equally well with an OBi or other wired ethernet device.

I am using fastvoip on the VG4, Nymgo on VG3 and GV on SP1. All my Incoming calls on GV account go to AA.

In my typical scenario, I use my call phone to call GV number and then from AA I create a new call thru VG3 or VG4.

My problem is when the call is bridged the call quality is consistently not good comapred to when I initiate a call thru Phone interface via VG3/VG4. Pl note all VSP here support G711 so what am I missing?

I use comcast 30(down)/4(up) mbps connection with zero packet loss and 10 ms ping time (speedtest.net). My network is pretty quiet. I use ASUS RT-N16 router flashed with tomato. So it's hard to blame router or ISP.

I have an account with Voip.ms where I have three DIDs. One is my home number for family & friends; one is my wife’s pseudo business. She’s a home health nurse, and one I use for business. Voip.ms allows you to create sub-accounts with their own long on credentials and also allow you to set the outgoing Caller-ID on each account. When we call family and friends our home CID is presented. When my wife calls her patients from our home phone the call goes out her CID. This is important because when patients get her number they call her for every little thing. So instead of they getting our home number (which they have in the past) they get her CID which can be presented with a distinctive ring and /or redirected to voice mail giving instructions to call the home office or 911 if emergency. Similar situation on mine. So being able to select the outgoing gateway allows us to use the home phone for business, but not having to react to incoming business calls.

On Voip.ms sub-accounts you can also track calls & expenses of which we write-0ff every year on our income taxes.

No ip phone necessary. Regular phone attached to the OBi will do the job. Calls between sub accts are free. CID number can be unique for each acct/sub acct. Lots of other features, too numerous to mention them all. Check out their web site for more info. Two major features are missing on the regular DID number they offer. Incoming fax doesn't work on the regular DID number for me, and CID requires a very small database look up fee (USA users might need this service). CID is handled differently in Canada vs the US. The CID info is normally passed with the call. I don't pay for the database look up and I still get CID info. They sell a premium DID service which I think handles incoming faxes.

CID number and name can be spoofed using their service. Meaning that you can have any CID name and number show up on the outgoing call. Good feature to have for a DID with sub accts.

« Last Edit: August 16, 2011, 06:53:18 pm by QBZappy »

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No ip phone necessary. Regular phone attached to the OBi will do the job. Calls between sub accts are free. CID number can be unique for each acct/sub acct. Lots of other features, too numerous to mention them all.

CID number and name can be spoofed using their service. Meaning that you can have any CID name and number show up on the outgoing call. Good feature to have for a DID with sub accts.

The custom rings -- is that something your configure on the Obihai? I saw section for ringtones but I didn't see a method of how to listen to them. Just numbered 1 through whatever.

Can you guys provide more information on how to get multiple linkes setup on the obi under the profiles. How do you access them and what are good outbound / inbound rules that should be place.

Finally, Have you guys had to add any firewall rules or QOS rules in your home router to help get the sip traffic to the obi faster versus haveing your streaming video, torrents, games or whatever getting priority traffic first?

Can you guys provide more information on how to get multiple linkes setup on the obi under the profiles. How do you access them and what are good outbound / inbound rules that should be place.

Once you get an acct with voip.ms, the sub acct is set up on their web portal. The sub acct is a variation of the main acct name that you can choose for yourself.

Remember that the OBi has 2 slots for setting up sip accts. If you need more sub accts you may need to setup using the OBi gateway. Setting up using an OBi gateway is slightly different. I'm not certain that voip.ms can be setp that way since I do not use the gateways. RonR can probably confirm that.

Finally, Have you guys had to add any firewall rules or QOS rules in your home router to help get the sip traffic to the obi faster versus haveing your streaming video, torrents, games or whatever getting priority traffic first?

I have. Not all routers/router firmwares are created equal. Many on this forum have mentioned using various routers moded with Tomato firmware or DDWRT. What router and firmware do you use?

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Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

Once you get an acct with voip.ms, the sub acct is set up on their web portal. The sub acct is a variation of the main acct name that you can choose for yourself.

Remember that the OBi has 2 slots for setting up sip accts. If you need more sub accts you may need to setup using the OBi gateway. Setting up using an OBi gateway is slightly different. I'm not certain that voip.ms can be setp that way since I do not use the gateways. RonR can probably confirm that.

I created an account with voip.ms. Default setup. No sub accounts yet. Haven't been able to plow through the guide. So, I want to have a personal friends&family line and my wife's business line. You said that the Obi only has 2 slots for SP1 and SP2.

If I understand this correctly then: I create 2 subaccounts.

subaccount one: 13xxxx_homeSubaccount two: 13xxxx_business

In order to complete these subaccount setups I need to get two DID USA phone numbers in some area of my region that is reasonably close.

I have. Not all routers/router firmwares are created equal. Many on this forum have mentioned using various routers moded with Tomato firmware or DDWRT. What router and firmware do you use?

I have the DLINK -DGL4500 router. I tried some QOS rules in the "game fuel" section to prioritize Google voice and chat traffic but that seemed to not make a difference with the unreliable Google voice service. People call they can't hear me, or they cannot hear me speaking when I call. It was frustrating.